Cut sugar, rehydrate and do high-intensity exercise anytime you make a mistake; plus, find time for 5 minutes of exercise 3x per day.
The rules are simple, and you can be there before you know it. Eliminate sugar from your diet, entirely, and cut out the possibility of putting on fat; you're addressing the hormonal imbalances your body has brought on since you developed insulin sensitivity, and you're re-stabilizing your body without all of the inflammation that processed sugars create in our bodies.
Eliminating sugar, while rehydrating, stimulates an increase in cellular metabolism while simultaneously eliminating energy crashes, excess-sugar fat deposits that happen when you consume more sugar than your body can process, and abnormalities in blood pressure and heart rate response that take place with dehydration. In turn, your body realizes its ready for change, and it responds.
There is a lot of controversy about whether or not you should do cardio, interval training, build muscle before you lose fat, or do high repetition-based exercise. The fact of the matter is that all approaches help people with weight loss, but let's compare and contrast these four methods for a greater understanding and increased likelihood of success:
| Cardio For Weight Loss | High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) | Building Muscle For Weight Loss | High Repetition/ Intensity-Based Exercise For Weight Loss | |
| Burns Calories During Workout | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Burns Calories After Workout Is Over | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Helps Body Burn More Calories Over Time | No | Yes, with plateau effect | Yes, no plateau | Yes, with effect plateau effect |
| Uses "Carb-Based Calories" To Burn Fat | Yes, tons. | Yes, tons. | Barely | Yes, tons. |
| Uses "Protein-Based Calories" To Burn Fat | No, barely. | No, barely. | Yes, tons. | Some |
| Uses "Fat-Based Calories" To Burn Fat | Yes, if greater than 40 minutes. | Yes, but only in afterburn effect. | Yes | Yes, but not quite as much as muscle building |
| Leads To Higher Exercise Tolerance For Increased Workout Capability Over Time | Slowly | Rapidly | Moderately | Quickly |
| Functional Carryover To Weight Loss Through ADL's | None | Depends on whether or not this is done outside or on a machine | Often, but not always. | Often, but not always. |
| Increases Risk of Injury With Workout | Yes, but usually not during cardio. | Yes, when over VO2 max or 20 minutes. | Yes, especially without a spotter | Low, but possible |
Now that we've listed out the various benefits of each form of weight loss exercise, let's discuss the importance of each row above in your weight loss efforts:
| Weight Loss Factor: | Importance For Weight Loss: |
| Burns Calories During Workout | Calories In vs Calories Out still determines your overall ability to lose weight, but this doesn't take into account the necessity to discuss 'nutrient density' in your caloric intake.* |
| Burns Calories After A Workout | This is the result of an 'afterburn effect' (EPOC) that takes place when your body craves oxygen after a workout, and it forces repair of injured muscle tissue used to train. Muscle naturally gets injured in a small way when you do high intensity exercise or you lift weights; repairing this muscle, and ridding it of lactic acid, is what leads to burning calories for days after a workout. |
| Helps Body Burn More Calories Over Time | Building muscle leads to an increased metabolism by increasing your muscle:fat ratio. Your muscle:fat ratio ultimately determines your metabolism, as increasing muscle mass forces your body to work harder to feed itself, ultimately burning more calories throughout each day. |
| Uses "Carb-Based Calories" To Burn Fat | Generally speaking, people overeat carbs, so it's great to have a solution that burns through your sugars and carbs when you need to. However, the better advice would be to do the minimum amount of exercise needed to burn excess carbs, and then work on utilizing your other macronutrient categories for caloric burn and weight loss. |
| Uses "Protein-Based Calories" To Burn Fat | Biasing protein-based calories for weight loss means that you are building muscle, which ultimately affects your muscle:fat (muscle to fat) ratio. |
| Uses "Fat-Based Calories" To Burn Fat | Oddly enough, these aren't the most important calories to burn during a workout, as this will often mean that you are losing the main benefit of your workout. Fat-burning calories get affected with low-load, high-duration exercise, or after a workout that involves the 'afterburn effect;' this is when your body is continuing to burn calories, but at a lower heart rate and with less work. |
| Leads To Increased Exercise Tolerance For Increased Workout Capability Over Time | Increasing exercise tolerance, or VO2 max, is one of the most important factors for someone who is just starting out or who hasn't reached his/her fitness potential. If your body has the ability to tolerate more work (i.e. more reps, more weight, longer workouts, etc.), your body has the ability to get more results from every workout. |
| Functional Carryover To Weight Loss Through Activities of Daily Living (ADL's) | When you choose exercises that "remind" your body of your workout during your day, your body naturally engages your muscles a bit more, remembers postural setting, and believes it needs to grow to survive. From a practical example, when we were hunters and gatherers, running more meant that we needed to be able to run further to find food; similarly, lifting heavy rocks meant that we needed to build a home, so we needed more strength. Our bodies are smart, so they respond. |
| Increases Risk Of Injury With Workout | Avoiding injury is paramount in your exercise success. Not only is injury avoidance important for faster results, but it's also important to help with your motivation levels. Finally, an injured muscle/joint remembers the injury for longer than the expected time period, and it causes muscle imbalances to take place. Without specifically reversing these muscle imbalances, your results will naturally plateau over time, or even reverse in some situations. |
*NOTE on 'Nutrient Density': All calories were not created equally. At the end of the day, calories in vs calories out will let you know if you are in a caloric deficit, which leads to weight loss. However, protein-based calories are known to consume 20% of themselves, so these calories don't count for as much. Also, all excess calories derived from any macronutrient group that go unused ultimately turn to sugar and get deposited as fat. Therefore, if you ate 2000 calories of only carbs, your body would store much more fat than if you ate a blend of carbs, proteins, and fats.
Awesome! So now you know that cardio can be an effective way to burn calories in the moment, and it helps you get rid of carbs, but it might not be the best way to burn calories long-term. Also, it is not the most efficient way to lose weight, although it does work.
Next, you understand that interval-training is an effective way to burn calories both now, and after you go to the gym; but alone, it will lead to plateau. The reason for this is because your body needs to build muscle to sustain an increased metabolism. There are two ways to increase your metabolism:
- Lower your bodyfat
- Increase your muscle mass
Interval training does a great job of lowering bodyfat, as you rid your body of all of its excess sugars, bias protein and fat-burning for days to come, and increase your exercise tolerance. However, it will not lead to increasing your muscle mass, whatsoever. So, interval-training, alone, is not the answer.
Building muscle is great for #2, above, but often times these workouts force you to increase your caloric intake in order to grow the muscle. Also, long rest breaks are important for muscle building, so you need to factor in the decrease heart rate response to exercise that would take place in interval training.
To come full circle, let's discuss high repetition/intensity-based exercise as a plan to lose 10 pounds as fast as possible. In this case, we'll eventually plateau if we don't build muscle, but we will accomplish both #1 and #2, albeit more of #1 than #2. Your body will have the same response as interval training, in terms of bodyfat response, because you can actually train with intervals while lifting lighter weights. Naturally, since you are lifting weight, you will build a bit of muscle as well.
When it comes to losing 10 pounds as fast as possible and sustaining those results, high intensity-based exercise is the way to go. Your body needs to crave an increased exercise tolerance, consume its own carbs on a daily basis, and bias protein-breakdown for increasing your muscle mass over time. Ultimately, you should periodize this type of program to alternate with muscle building every 4-6 weeks for best effect, but this is the fastest path to weight loss.
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